On quality. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to hear Dr. Tariq Banuri speak on quality, at IBA Karachi faculty retreat on Wednesday, 29th June 2022.

As a retired product manager and teacher the discussion resonated with several themes I had experienced professionally. But to date I hadn’t heard anyone speak so eloquently about quality. His exposition made it interesting, personal, and relevant.

Even though Dr. Banuri emphasis was on quality within the field of education and academia, his framework is equally applicable to creative art forms including software, technology, products, games, storyboards and artefacts.

Dr Banuri referred to Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance and the concept of meta quality.

A quick qualifier. Original context for this conversation was around quality in education. The post is based on notes I took during the talk based on Dr. Banuri and Robert Pirsig’s work and my recollection.

Four themes

The talk focuses on four themes.

a) Systems of knowledge

b) Culture

c) Quality

d) Solutions

One. Systems of knowledge

On knowledge and understanding. Two systems of knowledge and understanding that we zero in on. There are more

Techne and Episteme.

Techne or classical frameworks focus on craft of making, building and doing.

Episteme focuses on knowing and understanding in an experiential sense.

Techne would describe a motorcycle as a collection of parts, gears, engines, shafts and tires.

Episteme would describe the same in terms of experience of riding a bike, of the wind running through your hair as you cut across it.

These are alternate ways of knowing. Not points of view or opinions but frameworks of structuring reality. Our understanding of “quality” and the conversations we have depends on framework we use (efficiency, equity/ equality, rights, freedoms, or judgment).

Two. Cultures.

A society is a collection of cultures. For those of us in Pakistan, there are four of interest.

The organization. Centered around work.

The bazar. Centered around trading, selling and business.

The public square. Focused on voices, ideas and sometimes protests.

The academia. Focused on knowledge, knowing, truths and facts.

To retain balance all four cultures, play their part. But if one becomes dominant, it contaminates the other four. Dr. Sahib’s thesis is that in our case, we have let the public square dominate discourse. Often via protest, sometimes even violent protests. Because the model works, reason, knowledge, and truth defer to outrage, malice and hate.

There is no longer a signal, just noise. Not an exchange of ideas or thoughts, but posturing.

The other three cultures take inspiration from the same model. We see hints and flavors of the protest culture take root in organization, bazar, and academia. Truth and knowledge become less important. Loud voices dominate and lead.

The loudest of voices, win.

Three, quality.

The role of academia is to gauge fit and quality with respect to skillsets. Academia evaluates individuals and certifies them to have certain skills that make it possible to accomplish tasks. Society relies on this validation to slot individuals in appropriate roles.

This assessment is less driven by a checklist and more by judgement. The definition of quality is nebulous and of infinite dimensions. When we quantify and encapsulate it using finite frameworks, quality slips through our fingers.

Quality is by itself a way of knowing, a language. It is this language that has disappeared from our society that we need to reclaim. To appreciate quality is to know it. It is a judgement.

Judgement is different from a score driven by a checklist. When we see a great design or a piece of art, we can instantly feel and sense its greatness. Because it moves us. But when we try and describe it and use that description to reproduce the same art, we fail.

When we defer to checklists over judgments, we lose out on quality, because we can no longer sense or differentiate. We have abdicated our authority to judge. Scores and checklists are mechanical in nature. They don’t encapsulate the sense of “knowing”.

Hence the importance in academic culture to judge using “knowing” rather than score using a checklist. One can’t assess quality of ideas in a paper using a filtered checklist. To assess quality, the depth of discourse, contribution to knowledge and impact on society, we have to judge.

Four, solutions.

Given the challenge in defining quality, one assumes, the same challenge is faced in defining a solution. If the problem has infinite dimensions, the solution cannot have finite dimensions. Hence by design, the solution can only be known, not defined.

What follows next is an implied leap. Dr Sahib didn’t say this, but it follows from his discourse.

Contributors to solutions include two categories.

Spectators and participants. Spectators are individuals who while passing by are handed a wrench and asked to fix a bike. They may not have interest, background, context, or knowledge.

Participants engage in seeking “knowledge” or “knowing”. Spectators focus on in the moment experiences. Participants focus on knowing and understanding. Spectators defer to specialists to fix things, participants explore, learn and experiment.

Pirsig suggests that there are paths that do both.

Hence the implication that solutions to infinite dimensional problems such as quality come from a sense of knowing and judgement. Not scorecards and checklists. To me personally this was a key insight.

I am not sure if knowing is the same as intuition. Yet you can’t equate or replace intuitive judgement or knowledge acquired across years of exposure with a mechanical checklist or score card.

Someone asked me yesterday, when will we, the actuaries, be replaced by a calculating machine? I said the good ones, never.

The science can be modelled. Interestingly we haven’t figured out how to model the craft and art of knowing. Yet.

My favorite example. When every single test indicates the patient doesn’t have Covid, a decent infectious disease specialist can still sense, know, feel the presence of the disease.

She knows.

How do we instill quality? We instill quality by instilling “knowing”. Knowledge based on exposure. Not a checklist.

A good art history course will go through 300 selected pieces of high-quality art to instill “knowing” by exposure, critique, and discussion. A sense of judgement? We follow similar models with writing and film.

In the end who do we want to be? Spectators or participants? In the moment experiences or knowledge and knowing? Judgement or intuition? Over codified checklists.

That choice determines the quality and impact of our solutions.